For anyone who finds that their calls provider is doing this I would note that I take my WLR line rental from www.yourcalls.net and they do not block 1280 access, even though this is a WLR product where I also take my line rental from them.  The calls come through on my yourcalls.net bill but seem to be at a different rate to yourcalls.net's normal stated tariffs to those codes.  They also do not block indirect access carriers like 18185, 1899 etc.

Complaining to Ofcom will unfortunately have very little effect for anyone who has this happen to them.  What needs to be done is to make a complaint to your own CPS calls provider, presumably achieve deadlock with them and then refer the matter on to the telecommunications ombudsman - Otelo - www.otelo.org.uk   A complaint to Trading Standards should also be made as Trading Standards counts numbers and acts where there are a fair few complaints.

This is a further example of so called competition in utilities being annihilated by ludicrous contract lock ins and ridiculous terms that the regulator does not prevent.

For instance I just checked alternatives for Scottish Power for my gas and electricity with www.energyhelpline.com and www.energylinx.co.uk and each pointed me to Npower being £45 a year cheaper and I can also get another £40 cashback for switching with www.topcashback.co.uk

However careful examination of the Npower terms and conditions shows that both my gas and electricty tariffs would have gobsmacking standing charges of £100 each (even though the unit cost is very low) and there is also a £50 rebate for paying by direct debit on each utility (£50 for gas and £50 for electricity so £100 rebate total) only paid after 12 months in each case.  In other words Npower's tariff is such that unless you stay exactly one year and leave immediately at the end of the year you are shafted.  If you try to change supplier to a cheaper one after 4 months or 16 months you lose out massively.  So it is not worth changing from Scottish Power Online Energy Saver 4, who do not have these lock ins, and I await a better deal without lock ins from a rival.  But how many members of the public would spot the lock in as it is not made clear by the energy saving websites or in any of their headline information on the packages.

A decent regulator who wanted competition would make these kind of unfair lock ins illegal as they distort customer price perceptions of whether switching is sensible but unfortunately the kind of in bed with the industry regulators we have do absolutely nothing.

NGMsGhost wrote on Dec 8^th, 2008 at 9:19am:


That may well be the case,but the thread is about people who have left their line rental with BT and cps their calls to another supplier,and are now stopped from placing some calls via BT to get cheaper calls ,or because they want to qualify for free calling features. If you move your line rental away from BT and attempt to use 1280 its always going to be billed by your line rental provider as you no longer have an account with BT.

See here: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/Oftel/ind_groups/op_policy/cpscgm/docs/cp...

Ofcom say :

"Q: Do I have to make every call using my CPS provider?

No, you will be able to use any other provider with whom you have arranged services (including BT) by dialling extra digits before the phone number you want to call. (This is called an 'over-ride' or 'indirect access' code.) For example, you may want to use a CPS provider for most international calls but use another provider just for calls to a particular country. "

But now without warning allow the over-ride code to be blocked !!!!!